


A certain toughness

by Lilliburlero



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, Contraception, Crack, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Future Fic, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sexism, Smut, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 18:09:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4029631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten David/Hilary vignettes.</p><p>*</p><p>Advisory: sexism, surgeons being titanic arseholes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rather at a loss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naraht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/gifts).



> Er, I seem to ship it like mighty. All [Naraht's fault](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1560389).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst.

David looked at the broken slides on the floor: iridescent and jagged, like oyster shells. He had spoken loftily and dismissively to punish himself for the shameful desire that he barely owned even in the privacy of his thoughts: for a woman who would dominate to the point of unmanning him. Had it been a sexual fetish only, he might have been able to broach it with her―they laughed about things like that, in bed, and laughter might ease a request, an experiment. But it was more―very much more: he wanted to submit in _everything_. He saw again her departing back, finality somehow inscribed in the way the red waves of her hair swung above the grey-green tweed of her coat. He sighed heavily and went to the cupboard for the dustpan and brush.


	2. A mental slum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regency AU

The Tyranny of Mr ―― and Miss M― over that _Set_ is complete: among them is no manifestation of Sensibility permitted, nothing that savours in the least of the Romantick, but a positive Parade of frank Intercourse  & good sense―they are the greatest Enthusiasts for dry rationality that ever were, and it is twice as wearing as all the devotees of _Ossian_ and the _Man of Feeling_ combin’d.


	3. A human entity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crack zombie apocalypse AU.

Sanderson slammed the heavy door behind him. The irony of the morgue being their sanctuary and headquarters had long ceased to be a subject of remark, but Hilary couldn’t help but notice how magnificently _alive_ he seemed. Dressed only in the denims and sleeveless shirt he used to wear under his theatre gown, his was a physique to attract more than disinterested admiration, even in the midst of catastrophe and spattered with gore of a sort that even among neurosurgeons might be better left unnamed. He visibly suppressed an oath. 

‘Hilary. I’m sorry. It’s as we thought. David’s―infected. The bad news is I didn’t―couldn’t get to him. Sometimes a sort of low cunning survives―anyway. The thing is, are you all right to take your shift knowing he’s out there?’ 

‘Of course. It finished, months ago. You know that.’

He grinned at her air of dignity. ‘It’s a bit different from being civil if you happen to be asked to the same party, is all I’m saying. When I had to deal with Ossie―well, you know. Out of cartridges, and―’ 

‘Lucky that prosthetic leg was to hand. Hang on― _Ossie_. You mean you―’ 

‘I thought you knew. Women often guess. But it was finished, of course. Months ago.’


	4. Squalling apologetics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Future-fic.

‘Oh, I _adore_ her. Have you noticed her ankles? Splendidly turned.’

‘Can’t say I have―oh, but David, you _can’t_. That ghastly St Francis of Assisi speech? At school we would have said L.M.C.’ 

‘Would you? How very L.M.C. of you.’ 

Hilary threw a cushion at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> L.M.C.: Lower Middle Class. [Alan Ross](http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/ufy/24991_s113_150Ross.pdf) mentions this as one of the slang phrases used 'at the beginning of the century to designate non-gentlemen,' and adds, 'at this distance of time it is hard to decide which of these phrases, if any, were U [...] and which belonged rather to the extensive class of non-U speakers trying to become U.'


	5. A bathetic business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First time fic.

‘About how long?’

‘I’m afraid I honestly don’t―I mean I’ve fitted it, of course―but I’ve never _timed_ ―’ 

He lit a cigarette and said with what Hilary, had she been even a trifle less agitated, might have recognised as very studied off-handedness, ‘I’ll have another after this one. That’s usually enough, but if you need more time, just shout.’


	6. Lightheadness...poetry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hilary and David don't do _fluff_ , goddammit.

The door closed behind Julian; Oliver’s bedtime story brooked neither anticipation nor delay, but must be delivered promptly at seven.

‘I like him. He’s rather a poppet.’ 

Hilary’s lips opened in a gasp and closed on a mouthful of air, but she decided to take it well. 

‘I mean,’ David continued, ‘I can’t say that he’s what I imagined for you―’ 

‘Did you? Imagine, I mean?’ 

‘Didn’t _you_?’ 

‘For you? No―’ 

‘Maybe women don’t. Anyway, he suits you. I always thought you should have the wrong husband, or none―’ 

Hilary looked around for something to throw at him, but finding nothing soft, confined herself to a look of furious affection over her pink gin.


	7. Affection and zest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David is an embarrassing leaving-do speaker.

‘This might not, it occurs to me, be quite the time and place to rehearse the old saw about the woman surgeon and the joke―so it remains only for me to wish Hilary the very best of luck with the new firm, and my condolences to the young men under her―gentlemen, please!―whose surreptitious, torchlit reading of Haggard beneath prep-school sheets is but poor preparation for life as servants of this modern, this reincarnate, as she promised, _Ayesha_ ―’


	8. Physical compatibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut (v. mild smut). French knickers.

It was a rather ribald party, but not really the sort at which people paired off: a lack of dark corners; too few women. David had a woman, though, and he had her in a dark corner; the company paid no heed, dancing clumsily or braying out anecdotes. His fingers were above her stocking-tops; the skin there was papery and redhead-frail. He kept on expecting her to remonstrate, rebuking not his lust but his vulgarity. But she didn’t speak, her breath coming heavy and inviting. One of her hands was in the small of his back; the other rested on his thigh. He wished she’d move it up and to the left a fraction, but perhaps he couldn’t expect that until they were alone. He imagined her fingers around his cock―her mouth around it―he definitely couldn’t expect _that_ , he concluded, and reapplied himself, finding and feeling the silky stuff of her knickers―good Christ, they were the French sort.

‘Hilary, you glorious little tart,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Did you wear these so I could do―’ 

His thumb discovered sparse hair, softer than he’d encountered before, (there had only actually been one encounter before, and she'd been the _black wires grow on her head_ type, not really his at all, all the better to get one's first time out of the way with) then a moment of fleshy resistance, giving onto slick feminine warmth. 

‘That?’ she gasped.


	9. A large gesture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dammit, David and Hilary don't do hurt/comfort either.

‘Bloody hell, you look awful.’

‘Thank you, darling. I didn’t have time to put any make-up on. And I haven’t washed my hair since the epidemic started. About twenty percent of us are down. Nature in the raw, that’s all.’ 

‘Red in tooth and claw,’ he croaked. 

That was well below his usual standard, but he did have a temperature of a hundred and one. She sat on the end of the bed, suddenly exhausted, aching and shivering. Her headache flared and spat, like embers broken under a poker. 

‘You’ve caught it, haven’t you?’ he said, as perspicacious and half-abstracted as if he'd been quite well. 

About to deny it, she felt suddenly flat, smothered and resistless. 

‘Think so,’ she said tunelessly. 

Without a word, he lifted the sheet; she kicked off her brogues all anyhow and crawled in beside him.


	10. Typical of a man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which UST doesn't stay U very long.

He had a thin, charming face; brown curls into which androgenic alopecia was making an early inroad.

‘―most extraordinary person in a boiled shirt and pinstripe waistcoat. Absolutely none of the porter-taming tricks I learned at Trinity would wash in the slightest―I don’t suppose you know how to soothe a butler’s savage breast, do you?’ 

Who did he think he was fooling, with the Robert Templeton verbal mannerisms? He was as much a product of a minor public school as she was of a good Girls’ High: he’d probably been elevated on his intellectual lights to Head of his House as she'd been to Head Girl, and made a similarly perfunctory job of it. 

She offered some general advice on the fads of that pompous factotum, and threw in a few of the Matron’s pet megrims for good measure. 

Her. He was fooling her. His hand―not Templetonianly ape-like, nor over-fine, but full of intelligence and adaptable strength―feinted at her forearm. His hazel eyes were very green in electric light.


End file.
